How To Attract Your Ideal Customers on Facebook

FaceBook advertising is a stellar strategy to reach potential customers and spread your message. The number of platform users is compelling enough, with 1.4 billion people connected to the social network and 900 million logging in daily. The specificity of its targeting also leverages FaceBook’s ability to reach your ideal customer, with demographics such as interests, location, age, groups, education, purchase behavior and more available to advertisers. Often, the largest hurdle to utilizing the platform’s prowess is technological overwhelm. The process of integrating campaigns, ad sets (desired audiences), images, headlines, body text, link description, and associated web addresses can befuddle many prospective advertisers. The titan of a social network may have realized this, as they offer two options for ad creation–Ads Manager and Power Editor. Ads Manager limits the number of characters for headlines and text, walking users through a step-by-step sequence to create their ad. More advanced users rely on Power Editor, a feature that FaceBook publishes novel targeting capabilities before they transferring them to Ads Manager. For novices, I recommend using Ads Manager, for experienced marketers, Power Editor.

There is no dearth of factors to consider when creating your FaceBook ad. Questions common from first-time advertisers include, “how can I make my copy compelling,” “what image should I use,” and “what amount of text will spur the most clicks?” The headline, body text, and link description should reflect your brand message. One strategy to establish dialect to align with such message is to create a Style Guide. This instructional reference will outline what words you would and would not allow in a social media post representing your company. For example, if your enterprise was recognized for an achievement, would you post, “Honored to be featured in/by…” or “Wahoo! We got coverage in…”? Individuals can often discern which words they would not use before the ones they would. Surveying other social media accounts that you admire can also help you build a Style Guide.

As you create your FaceBook ads, urgency and importance are two potent psychological triggers to integrate. Phrases such as “limited time”, “deadline”, “act now”, “last chance” and “don’t miss out” spawn a desire to take action in many viewers. You should fulfill the time-honored business principle of demand satisfaction; your offer or discount must add value to the consumer. FaceBook’s ad sets, or targeted audiences, allow advertisers to pinpoint character traits they believe would lead to conversions. For example, a company is targeting an audience of entrepreneurs who interests include “social media”, which would amass 78,880,210 people. One compelling headline to capture those individuals’ attention could be, “Sign up for 20% Savings: Social Media Mastery Summit”. The inclusion of numbers in headlines and text grips a person’s attention longer than a mere body of words. Since people are exposed to advertising every day, a helpful question to ask yourself as you create ad images and text is, “Would I click on this ad if I saw it in the Newsfeed?” If the immediate answer is “no”, revisions are needed. If the answer is “yes”, be sure to test at least one more ad image or text alteration to see which performs better. The belief that one ad will captivate a targeted audience on its first attempt signals out a novice marketer; the willingness to A/B test and thereby understand consumer preferences crowns a savvy one.

A marketer must select equally compelling imagery to grab prospects’ attention. An image displaying emotion and vibrancy of color stands out in Facebook’s Newsfeed. Emotion evokes more responses than stoicism simply because of its societal rarity. Pigment choice can illuminate an image against Facebook’s blue and white background, thereby designating orange, yellow, green and red as the optimal colors to garner attention. In later posts, we will discuss connecting your campaigns to images, audiences, and demographics.